Month: April 2014

Civilization isn’t so much a computer game as a wonder of the world, and has consumed more person-hours. The latest update adds an array of new victory conditions:

Irony Victory

Make Genghis Khan the most bullied person in history by always pre-emptively annihilating him, then get nuked by Mahatma Ghandi.

You Have Work In The Morning Victory

The game detects that it’s 4 am, that you have an alarm set for 7 am and surrenders in self defense. Because you won’t be able to afford electricity if you’re fired.

Multilingual Victory

The game realizes that you could have learned another language in the time you’ve been playing and starts switching to it. You’re so familiar with the options and structures you don’t really notice and become fluent.

Meta-Victory

Your civilization researches Computers, masters the Commerce tree, fills out the Freedom ideology, invents the game of Civilization, then ignores all the…

It’s not fair, a stranger’s face shouldn’t look like you.
I shouldn’t see it every time I glance up from my feet.
Don’t you know my mind is weak to the hauntings of
Friends who’ve passed, monsters who hide behind
familiar faces, the hollow shells of addicted souls?

When death grasps, my mind clasps onto any
remnant and plants them into my waking eyes.
There’s an ache in my chest when I hear a guffaw
too much like those I remember.

A saxophone is always going to be a sad creature to listen to.
My favorite crime shows are too real now.

The things we’ve grown to see as fictitious now terrorize us
as we take our steps forward into the misty isle of grief.
A grief we all now have to face.